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Hurricane Dorian has caused major damage in the Bahamas – destroying homes and ripping roofs from buildings – as it made landfall as the joint-strongest ever Atlantic storm. There were no immediate reports of deaths.As the governor of South Carolina ordered an evacuation of the entire coast as the storm threatened the US, Bahamian and tourists in places such as the Abaco Islands and Marsh Harbour, took shelter in schools and churches when Dorian made landfall as a category 5 storm with gusts of up to 220mph and a sustained speed of 185mph.

Mass shootings command widespread media coverage, but lost in the national conversations about guns are everyday killings A memorial where 26-year-old Chantell Grant and 35-year-old Andrea Stoudemire were shot and killed on 28 July in the South Side of Chicago. Photograph: Kamil Krzaczyński/AFP/Getty ImagesAs deadly mass shootings devastated communities in Texas and Ohio and reignited calls for lawmakers to act on gun reform, Chicago experienced yet another bloody weekend – suffering the kind of violence that has come to be treated by the nation as almost routine in this city.Seven people were killed and 46 wounded here, including in two multiple shootings on the west side. The first of the shootings, in the Douglas Park neighborhood early on Sunday, left seven wounded; the second, in Lawndale hours later, wounded another seven and killed one.“As a city, we have to stand up and do a hell of a lot more than we’ve done in a very long time,” Mayor Lori Lightfoot said in an address on the violence over the weekend.“There are no adequate words at this point,” she said of the violence.Often lost in national conversations about guns are shootings occurring every day in places like Chicago, which has continued to see high levels of violence, mostly affecting its predominantly black and brown south and west sides.“In Chicago, it’s just another weekend,” Father Michael Pfleger, a south side pastor and anti-violence activist, said of the national response to the city’s deadly violence. “It gets forgotten and pushed to the side.”Where mass shootings tend to command widespread media coverage, Pfleger said, violence in Chicago tends not to make national headlines. In part, he believes it’s become an “old story” after years of the city suffering from a devastatingly high murder rate. But it also has to do with the fact that those being affected by the city’s scourge of violence are mostly black and brown Chicagoans, he said.“Black and brown life being taken by gun violence is not something America has been concerned about for a long time,” the St Sabina pastor said.“It needs to get the same attention,” Pfleger continued. “We have 47 people shot and seven killed. If that happened over in Iraq, that’s all anyone would be talking about.”To erase everyday violence from the national conversation about gun control is to lose sight of the scope of the problem, according to Kris Brown, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.“We do that at our own peril,” Brown told the Guardian. “It’s not routine for the people who live in these communities, and it doesn’t have to be accepted as normal.”As studies have shown, mass shootings like those in Texas and Ohio represent just a fraction of gun deaths in America. Suicides and other homicides account for the majority of firearm-related deaths. “We need to look at gun violence as the public health epidemic it is,” Brown said. “We have to change the cultural narrative around guns.”Doing so can be challenging, though, given the unwillingness by Republicans to act on commonsense gun reforms.“The shootings that occurred this past weekend in Chicago are certainly not taken for granted by the neighborhoods and families that experience them all too often,” Rob Nash, chair of the board of directors for the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence, said in an email interview. “The only people who have accepted gun violence as being routine are public policymakers who refuse to take action to stop it.”Brown said the Brady campaign was continuing to work on changing the national narrative about guns, and Pfleger is organizing a national demonstration in Washington DC, in September in an effort to pressure lawmakers into action. “They’re not gonna just do it,” Pfleger said of gun reform. “They have to be pushed.”

Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his ruling party would make up for its "shortcomings” after Turkish voters handed it a series of stinging local election defeats amid widespread frustration over the economy. The Turkish president’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) lost control of the mayorship of Ankara for the first time in 25 years and preliminary figures appeared to show they had also lost the mayor’s race in Istanbul. The results are arguably the worst showing for the AKP since it first came to power in 2003 and prompted victory celebrations among the Turkish opposition. Mr Erdogan, who has held power for 15 years and presided over a crackdown on the free media and political opponents, campaigned relentlessly and described the local elections as “a matter of survival” for the country. However, it was not enough to overcome public anger over the economy, which is currently in recession and has been dogged by a weakened currency that has damaged businesses and hurt families’ finances. Mr Erdogan appeared to cede the Istanbul vote Credit: Arif Hudaverdi Yaman/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images Speaking in Ankara, Mr Erdogan appeared somewhat chastened by the voters’ rebuke of his party. "If there are any shortcomings, it is our duty to correct them,” he said. “Starting tomorrow morning, we will begin our work to identify our shortcomings and make up for them." Turkish officials said the president may reshuffle his cabinet ministers as a way of signalling to both voters and the markets that he understood their frustration. Mr Erdogan nonetheless claimed victory on the grounds that the AKP and its nationalist allies had still won more than 50 per cent of the vote nationwide. AKP officials also said they planned to dispute the results in both Ankara and Istanbul, where their secular rivals, the Republican People’s Party (CHP), had claimed victory. The AKP candidate in Istanbul, Binali Yildrim, was trailing by 25,000 votes out of around 10 million total votes cast and refused to conceded. Mr Erdogan was elected mayor of Istanbul in 1994 and his allies have held the post ever since, meaning defeat there would be a blow to the president’s personal legacy. The gap was larger in Ankara, where the AKP candidate appeared to have lost 51 per cent to 47 per cent to a CHP challenger. The AKP said it planned to challenge the results there also. "The people have voted in favour of democracy, they have chosen democracy," said Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the leader of the CHP. Rusen Cakir, a prominent Turkish commentator, said the results were as important as those in 1994, when Mr Erdogan first became mayor of Istanbul. “It is is a declaration that a page that was opened 25 years ago is being turned,” he said. The results do not affect Mr Erdogan’s grip on the presidency nor his control of parliament, where the AKP retains control through an agreement with a smaller nationalist party. However, mayors have significant powers in Turkey and the CHP victories are likely to mean significant changes in how the country’s largest cities are run. Turkey has no scheduled elections for the next four years so it may be difficult for the opposition to turn its local election victories into broader political momentum. A team of election observers from the Council of Europe said it was “not fully convinced that Turkey currently has the free and fair electoral environment which is necessary for genuinely democratic elections”. Turkey’s media is overwhelmingly loyal to Mr Erdogan and his political opponents have faced arrest and harassment by state authorities as they tried to challenge the AKP. While Mr Erdogan took deliberately pragmatic positions during his first years in office, he has become more hardline over time, developing a political brand based on a combination of Islamism, authoritarian nationalism, and economic populism. He has moved aggressively to stamp out dissent in the three years since a failed coup against him in 2016. However, the CHP and other opposition parties retain large memberships and the infrastructure to fight elections.

Donald Trump suffered a double setback on Tuesday as his former national security adviser Michael Flynn was accused of selling out his country in court and it emerged the president’s charity will be dissolved amid claims of “shocking” illegality. Mr Flynn, who has admitted to lying to the FBI over his contacts with the Russian ambassador to the United States, was reprimanded for his “very serious” offence during a sentencing hearing in Washington DC. In a blistering rebuke, Emmet Sullivan, a US District Judge, told to Mr Flynn that “arguably you sold your country out”, later adding: "I'm not hiding my disgust, my disdain for this criminal offence." At one point the judge even asked prosecutors whether Mr Flynn’s actions could be considered treason, though later walked back the remarks by clarifying that he was not making that suggestion himself. Judge Sullivan also hinted that he was considering giving Mr Flynn a stint in jail despite his co-operation with special counsel Robert Mueller, who is leading the Russian election meddling investigation – something that seemed unlikely at the start of the day, given Mr Mueller was calling for leniency. Donald Trump, left, and Michael Flynn during a presidential campaign event in September 2016 Credit: REUTERS/Mike Sega Eventually the judge delayed the sentencing, indicating that he wanted to fully understand the extent of Mr Flynn’s cooperation with Mr Mueller’s team. No new date was set but a status report is due on March 13 2019. The courtroom dressing down was another blow for Mr Flynn, a retired US general who became one of Mr Trump’s most prominent supporters during the 2016 presidential campaign. He was handed the plum role of Mr Trump’s first national security adviser in January 2017 but was forced to resign just weeks later over his conversations with Sergey Kislyak, then Russian ambassador to the US. Mr Flynn has admitted to lying to the FBI about conversations he had with Mr Kislyak during the transition period after Mr Trump’s November 2016 election victory but before he took office. During that time Barack Obama remained US president. Mr Trump had wished Mr Flynn "good luck" earlier in the day. "Will be interesting to see what he has to say, despite tremendous pressure being put on him," he said in a tweet. On the same day Mr Flynn was being criticised in court there were new developments in a lawsuit filed against the president’s charity, the Trump Foundation. Barbara Underwood, the New York attorney general, announced that the Trump Foundation had agreed it should be dissolved and its remaining funds handed out to other charities, with her office overseeing the process. The deal needs to be approved by a federal judge. It follows a string of Washington Post stories in recent years claiming that money from the charity had been used to pay legal settlements for Mr Trump’s private business or purchase art from his clubs. Mr Trump has always denied wrongdoing. Michael Flynn, former US national security adviser, exits at federal court in Washington, DC Credit: Aaron P. Bernstein/Bloomberg He had planned to close down the embattled charity in December 2016 after he won the US election but the move was put on hold pending this investigation. Mrs Underwood's office begun legal action in June against Mr Trump, his three children – who were on the board – and the charity itself, over accusations of misuse of funds. She said on Tuesday that her investigation found “a shocking pattern of illegality involving the Trump Foundation — including unlawful coordination with the Trump presidential campaign, repeated and willful self-dealing, and much more.” Mrs Underwood is continuing to seek more than $ 2.8 million (£2.2m) in restitution and has asked a judge to ban the Trumps temporarily from serving on the boards of other New York nonprofit organisations.

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — Taiwan's ruling party was handed a major defeat in local elections Saturday that were seen as a referendum on the administration of the island's independence-leaning president amid growing economic and political pressure from China.

Gunman Robert Bowers only needed 20 minutes to sow terror at the Tree of Life synagogue in the US city of Pittsburgh, where congregants had gathered peacefully for Shabbat services marking a day of rest. Shortly before 10 am (1400 GMT) the 46-year-old Bowers — who had penned virulent anti-Semitic messages on social networks — burst into the synagogue armed with an assault rifle and three handguns. Stephen Weiss, a member of the congregation who was inside the building, told the Tribune-Review newspaper he heard dozens of shots coming from the front lobby.

German chemicals and pharmaceuticals giant Bayer said Thursday it would finally begin integrating US seeds and pesticides maker Monsanto into its business, after meeting competition authorities’ final conditions for the merger. Two months after it bought the US firm, “the integration of Monsanto into the Bayer Group can begin,” the Leverkusen-based company said. Thursday saw Bayer complete the sale of a final tranche of crop science businesses worth 5.9 billion euros ($ 6.7 billion) to rival BASF under concessions imposed by cartel watchdogs.

German chemicals and pharmaceuticals giant Bayer said Thursday that it would begin integrating seeds and pesticides maker Monsanto after a mega-merger, but its stock price was battered by the US firm’s legal woes. Two months after the $ 63 billion deal — the biggest ever foreign takeover by a German company — Bayer completed the sale of a final tranche of crop science businesses worth 5.9 billion euros ($ 6.7 billion) to rival BASF under concessions imposed by cartel watchdogs. With competition authorities’ conditions met, “the integration of Monsanto into the Bayer Group can begin,” the Leverkusen-based company said in a statement.